District Court (Third District : Salt Lake County) Civil case indexes

Historical Note

Scope and Content

The Civil Case Indexes record the names of plaintiffs and defendants involved in civil actions and provide assigned case numbers, facilitating clerical management of and access to the civil case files.

Information about most cases is limited to the name of the plaintiff, the name of the defendant, and the case number. The cause of action is mentioned only in proceedings pertaining to court business (grand jury lists and reports, orders summoning persons to serve as jurors, etc.), applications for extraordinary writs (habeas corpus, mandamus, and certiori), and petitions for voluntary withdrawal or corporate dissolution. Such cases are preceded by the notation "In the matter of . . ." and are grouped together in a section under the letters IN.

While sitting in Salt Lake City, the Third District Court is restricted to adjudication of civil actions involving real property located within Salt Lake County, those in which the defendant resides in Salt Lake County, and those involving incidents occurring in Salt Lake County.

Arrangement

For records created from 1896 to 1921, arrangement is chronological with separate indexes to plaintiffs (1896-1921) and defendants (1896-1929).

The successive volumes in which the indexes were kept between 1896 and 1968 were arranged chronologically. Most cover more than one year. Separate volumes indexing plaintiffs (1896-1921) and defendants (1896-1929) originally were maintained. The practice of including both parties together in the same index volume began in 1921. Index entries within individual volumes are roughly alphabetical by the surname of the plaintiff or defendant, with the initial two letters of the surname serving as the basis for indexing.

Related Records

Civil case files from the District Court (Third District : Salt Lake County), Series 1622, are indexed by the civil case indexes. CASE FILES (1852-1896) of civil cases adjudicated in Salt Lake County during the territorial period are in Series 9802.

Judgment dockets from the District Court (Third District : Salt Lake County), Series 1671, provide an alternate way to obtain case numbers assigned to civil case files via the internal surname indexes.

Case file index from the District Court (Third District), Series 3243, indexes civil cases from Salt Lake County during the latter territorial period.

Civil registers of actions from the District Court (Third District : Salt Lake County), Series 3252, facilitate access to this series.

Civil case files (sealed) from the District Court (Third District : Salt Lake County), Series 12628, are indexed by the civil case indexes. CASE FILES (1852-1896) of civil cases adjudicated in Salt Lake County during the territorial period are in Series 9802.

Civil case index from the District Court (Third District : Salt Lake County), Series 14260, also index the civil case files.

Custody History

The CIVIL CASE INDEXES were created and maintained by the Salt Lake County Clerk, who was constitutionally designated as ex-officio clerk of the Third District Court in and for Salt Lake County. Custody of court records was transferred to the new district court clerk in 1989 when legislative action relieved Salt Lake County of the administrative responsibility for the district court. Twenty volumes of the original typewritten indexes were transferred to the archives in October 1993.

Access Restrictions

Preferred Citation

Cite the Utah State Archives and Records Service, the creating agency name, the series title, and the series number.

Processing Note

Indexes were designated as a permanent record by Records Disposition Request 68-3, which also authorized microfilming and destruction of the original documents. The records retention policy of the Utah Judicial Council reprinted in the 1983 state retention schedule first specified a nine-year retention before microfilming. The CIVIL CASE INDEXES were microfilmed by Salt Lake County in 1975 and 1976. A previously unfilmed defendant index (1896-1910) was filmed by the Archives in May 1994. Original index volumes were destroyed by the archives in 1994, according to the retention policy. These records were archivally processed by W. Glen Fairclough, Jr., in May 1994.

Microfiche processed by Rebekkah Shaw under the National Historical Publications and Records Commission grant to the Utah State Archives and Records Services for the Utah Microfiche Backlog Project (Grant No.: NAR10-RB-50086-10). July 2010 - December 2011